Re: [cybalist] Re: Hamp and his dog

----- Original Message -----

From: DEFAYES MICHEL

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 5:26 PM

Subject: Re: [cybalist] Re: Hamp and his dog

 

Michel Desfayes wrote:

>Dear Piotr,

>I said of  "acoustic origin", not onomatopaeic or  imitative origin. Tordo is of acoustic origin, not imitative by any stretch of imagination.

So what precisely do you mean by "acoustic"? And in what sense is *kwo:n of "acoustic origin"?

 

As for tordo, I can only say that it derives from Latin turdus, which is related to thrush, throstle, Russian or Polish drozd, and some other IE names of the song thrush. The correspondences are not quite regular, but something like *druzdos seems reconstructible (with dissimilation to *truzdos here and there, and Latin *truzd- > *trurd- > *turd-). Perhaps the correct etymology is PIE *dru-sd-o- 'tree-sitter' -- and if so, where's the acoustic origin?

>Haliaeetus translate as "fishing eagle" and has nothing to do with to howl. Besides it does not howl [...] >turkey is from the country's name, not of acoustic origin.

Haliaeetus is literally 'sea-eagle' (from Greek hals 'salt, sea'), to be precise. I deliberately chose examples with more-or-less obvious etymologies to show that if one concentrates on the phonetic shape of a word and ignores its history, no valid conclusions can be drawn. But see what happens? You analyse my examples and discover that they are not of "acoustic origin". Why not apply the same method to your own list?

>konik is one of the 10 Polish regional names I have for the Tree Pipit, Anthus trivialis. Its official ornithological name is S'wiergotek drzewny. ship-ship is its call-note, not its song which does sound like a neighing, or may be likened to it.

Well, it rises vertically from a branch and then alights on it again. As it rises, it goes "chee-wiss, chee-wiss, chee-wiss", and as it slowly descends, it sings a drawled "cheeee-yaah, cheeee-yaah". Perhaps the latter sound could be likened to a neigh, but then konik is simply a descriptive nickname = 'little horse' (not sound-symbolic per se). The fact that it contains k-n is completely accidental and therefore irrelevant to any discussion of sound symbolism.

>The official ornithological name for the Brambling Fringilla montifringilla is Zieba jer. Kitajka is one of 18 Polish regional names for this bird. (kytajka is the spelling I have found; it may not be correct).

I did admit that as a possibility. Still, kitajka is a descriptive name, and refers to the cock bramble's cap; it isn't "acoustic" in any way. Zięba [z'emba] is the generic name of Fringilla, while jer refers specifically to the brambling and is the plain Polish word for the species. "Jer" IS imitative, as the brambling's call is "yerr" (alternating with "queck"). With 18 dialectal names at your disposal, why pick one that has nothing to do with acoustics?

>dukacz means to crow in a Polish dialect (of the Wrona Corvus corone cornix).

It could mean "a crow" (noun) -- another descriptive nickname meaning 'stutterer' -- but, believe me, definitely not "to crow" (verb). By the way, crows don't crow, they croak.

>Thank for the lessons in ornithology.

In linguistics, actually, though when discussing birds' names one cannot ignore ornithology.

Piotr